Civil Military Relations in Pakistan: A Brief Survey (A)

Civil Military Relations

Civil military relations for a country describes the relationship ​between a society as whole and
established military organization(s) to protect it (society).

More narrowly it describes the relationship between the ​civil authority of a given society and its
military authority.

The term “civil–military relations” refers to th​e role of the armed forces in a society​.

It implies that the relations between the military and the civilian population are like labor-management
relations, ​legislative-executive relations​.

civil-military relations includes studies of how a military employs civilian contractor, how military bases
interact with their neighbors, and how a nation's military affects its politics

Military organizations a​re generally​ established t​ o protect the societies from all kinds of threats like
external, internal and existential threats. ​Nature of civil military relations ​can be used to measure the
type of democracy​ in a country i.e​. G ​ ood democracy usually has balanced civil military relations. Also,
civil military relations refer to the role of armed forces in various components of society like e.g. how
military employ civilian contractors, how military bases are established, how they interact with
neighbors or how military affects the politics of a country. Balanced civil military relations can be
managed by considering all the required factors for balanced civil-military relations. The​ most basic
precondition ​of a true democratic setup is a ​healthy civil-military relationship​. In all democratic
countries, an elected civilian government enjoys ​full control over the military.

Civil Military Relations in Pakistan

From history, it can be analyzed that civil military relations of Pakistan mostly remain imbalanced due to
various reasons, the control of Pakistan’s governance remained shuffling between civilian supremacy
and military rule. Supposedly there are more than one reasons for these ​imbalanced civil military
relations, ​including the

incompetent political leadership, weak political parties.​ Other factors to imbalanced civil military
relations may include ​rising power of military bureaucracy, frequent use of military in aid of civil
power ​e.g. for solving internal political disputes etc. Sometimes it is perceived that the military desired
to rule the Pakistan but this perception is wrong as supposedly Pakistan has been suffering from
incompetent political leadership and weak political parties that are apparent causes of most of the
military interventions in governance.

Civil military relations can be ​affected by t​ he existential, internal, external and even global factors.
Pakistan has always remained under the existential and various other external threats that required a
strong and efficient military to mitigate these threats. e.g. The eastern and western border always
remained vulnerable to existential threats. ​Internal factors​ may include the incompetent leadership and
weak political parties, involvement of military in internal especially the political disputes. These all
factors including the external and internal factors require the active participation of the military in a
country that can lead to imbalance in civil military relations.

Civil-military relations of Pakistan r​emained imbalanced​, country has faced ​four military coups​ since its
inception, military has ruled Pakistan for ​33 years out of 72 years​, due to effects and perception drawn
from military rule, civil military relation balanced has been badly affected. it has been believed that the
military is the most influential institutional player, even it is widely believed that military rules from
behind the scenes in the civil governments. This trend of military supremacy can be observed in the
other strong democracies on the globe as well. This is a one side of coin that military is the most
influential player. The other side of coin can be the​ competent leaders and strong political parties ​can
work together with the military ​in their respective domains to maintain ​healthy ​and balanced civil
military relations.